India’s Vishwanathan Anand (R) and Israel’s Boris Gelfand play a FIDE World chess championship match in Moscow, last week.

The “think or blink” debate continues. Summarizing the conclusion of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel-winning psychologist, in Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” the writer Jim Holt observed, not long ago:

But for those who are merely interested in Kahneman’s takeaway on the Malcolm Gladwell question it is this: If you’ve had 10,000 hours of training in a predictable, rapid-feedback environment — chess, firefighting, anesthesiology — then blink. In all other cases, think.

Having read Kahneman’s book, I’m not so sure he comes down quite so clearly on the side of unconscious thought even in those specific cases; he’s certainly more skeptical than some of his peers, with whom he’s engaged in a running debate. In any case, a new study looks precisely at decision-making in one of the environments Holt mentions, chess. The conclusion: Never blink:

Our study examines the role of slow deliberation for experts who exhibit superior decision-making outcomes in tactical chess problems with clear best moves. Our study uses advanced computer software to measure the objective value of actions preferred at the start versus the conclusion of decision making. It ﬁnds that both experts and less skilled individuals beneﬁt signiﬁcantly from extra deliberation regardless of whether the problem is easy or difﬁcult. Our ﬁndings have important implications for the role of training for increasing decision making accuracy in many domains of expertise.

The participants in the study ranged from the 50th percentile of chess players up to the top tenth of a percentile. On easy moves,

Biographies

Gary Rosen is the editor of Review and the former managing editor of Commentary magazine. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of "American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding" and the editor of "The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq."